On Walls and Guns and Gay Rights: Believing Something Super Hard Doesn't Make It Less Wrong

On Walls and Guns and Gay Rights: Believing Something Super Hard Doesn't Make It Less Wrong

Like we needed any reminding, the ghastly proposed GOP platform confirms, Obama's peaceable platitudes notwithstanding, that we really are two countries, one of them insane and 300 years behind the times. The GOP is staunchly against weed, grey wolves, prairie chickens, magnetic pulse attacks, abortion in any circumstances, the "public health crisis" of pornography, gay marriage, gay children, gay people and the sinister specter of bathrooms of your choice. They are for guns, walls to be inexplicably paid for by other countries, conversion therapy for all those gay ills and institutional racism; on that subject, their presumptive candidate sorta thinks we should probably figure out what's going on with it especially 'cause it's just like what he goes through too. The Liberal Redneck hilariously seeks to make sense of the madness of a population who insists not just on the right to their crackpot beliefs, but the right to impose them on the rest of us. The masterful George Saunders, in The New Yorker, likewise explores the phenomenon of Trump supporters, and his sudden unprecedented ability to imagine America as "fragile, an experiment that could, in my lifetime, fail."

Further

Academics are increasingly, ingeniously fighting back against an Orwellian "Professor Watchlist" aimed at exposing "radical" teachers. The list has inspired online trolls to name their own suspects - Albus Dumbledore, Dr. Pepper, Mr. Spock - and a Watchlist Redux to honor not trash targets from Jesus to teachers daring to "think critically about power." Now 100 Notre Dame professors have asked to join the list in solidarity, proclaiming, "We wish to be counted among those you are watching."